The 1979 UK top ten hit by punk band Ian Dury and the Blockheads listed a whole raft of reasons to be cheerful: • Rock ‘n’ Roll singer Buddy Holly • The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Russia • Scammell Lorries (A British company who built heavy lorries, specifically an 18-wheeler lorry) • Equal voting rights for men and women • Little Richard’s 1956 hit “Good Golly Miss Molly” • Picc... »
One of the obvious existing “information markets” is the world of consumer loyalty schemes. Major loyalty schemes, such as those of Boots, Tesco, and the multi-retailer Nectar scheme are explicitly exchanging points for information. Whilst few people know what a point is actually worth (and that’s because it’s not easy to know, but that’s another story) a lot of people seem to think that giving de... »
The issue of privacy, or more generally and accurately the issue of who owns what data, and the rights and obligations associated with the use of that data have clearly shot up the public agenda. A term that a few years ago would have been associated with what you could and couldn’t do or say in your own home is now the topic of daily discussion in the context of Google, Facebook, the NSA and GCHQ... »
As we noted in our previous post about personalised pricing, at the moment it’s thought that businesses are only just beginning to experiment with individualised pricing based on analysis of their customers personal data. But at the moment no-one knows a great deal about what exactly is happening. In November 2012 the UK’s Office of Fair Trading issued a “call for information” asking businesses to... »
